


Three Small Things

by typervoxilations



Series: A Series of Unfortunate FEELINGS AND MISERY [1]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Established relationship from the beginning, Implied past torture but that's only if you've seen the manga or the anime I guess, M/M, Mafia AU, Or with anyone you know, The relationships in this are not healthy, because no Utakane fic would be complete without it, do not try this at home, don't join the mafia, stay in school kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 10:03:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2344406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typervoxilations/pseuds/typervoxilations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He can try all he wants, to fix the world, to patch the rips left by his indecision and inability to move on, to piece together the torn fabrics of his reality with needle and string, but at the end of the day, there's always someone with a sharp pair of scissors to tear back through all his hard work because it's only in their nature to do so.</i>
</p><p><i>The black of the void between the fragments suffocates him like ink overflowing from the pages of a book, </i>his<i> book, too full of letters and frantic, chicken-scratch words that blur the longer he stares and tries to make them out, but it's high time that his story's ended.</i></p><p>Alternatively, the one where Kaneki spirals into madness again, or there is no such thing as a happy ending in this fandom, or yet another angsty Utakane fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Small Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antagonists](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/gifts).



> So this is going to be my first official work of fanfiction ever, since I was always too scared to try to do other people's characters, but I was finally convinced.  
> This is shorter than I originally thought but I couldn't quite think of anything else to put into it?  
> Please feel free to leave comments and tell me what you think about it because I'm always open to suggestions on how to improve! (◡‿◡✿)

* * *

 

“ _The motions of the world do not stop, nor are their sounds muted, for the sake of any unfortunate man who wishes not to move forward._ ”

[N.T.](http://houseangelos.co.vu/tagged/bentobride!poetry)

* * *

✁━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Kaneki remembers it being distinctly different, when he first started out.  

( _I'm begging you, please don't make me a killer)_

He hadn't been born into the life, but the Anteiku had saved him when he was hovering on the border between death and a different kind of death, welcomed him with open arms, and he had been foolish enough to think that maybe, maybe, there was a way to balance out the two worlds, that he was allowed to have one foot in each but he was foolish to believe that they wouldn't gravitate apart and rip him to pieces. Because then he was falling, falling, falling, through the void because he had somehow lost his foothold in reality and the brief moment of distraction had been more than enough to make him lose sight of everything. 

_One, two, three..._

He counts thirty and the bullets clatter to the cement (like the windchimes in Hideyoshi's summer home that they used to visit when they were children, lounging lazily on the porch that opened up into the garden while counting the insects that they caught, _one, two, three_ ) while the bodies that follow are heavier, muted.

The rain makes his hair stick to the nape of his neck and his clothes weigh down on his shoulders like the weight of the world and he's Atlas, because all he can see - _remember_ \- is blond hair stained red, and even though the rain is washing it away, pink waters trickling down the gutters, he's not moving - _I already knew, who cares about that? Le_ _t's just go home already_ \- and the gun feels heavy, too heavy, in his shaking hands -  _there was the vague bittersweet iron taste of blood in his mouth_ \- and there's no time for him to stay, no time for the shock to catch up to him -  _HideyoshiHide **Hide Hide** _\- because more trouble is coming and he can't -  _  
_

The words wash over him, colder than the icy rain and he's brought back to the present, and none of the corpses in front of him are blond or young or familiar at all, and it's been years but he still feels the phantom pain of an age old wound that isn't physical.

"Let's go home." 

It's a different voice from the one in his memories, even if they're saying the same thing, female, calm, unperturbed by the scent of recently deceased mixed with the mothball evaporating heat from the sudden summer shower, and Touka slides away from Kaneki and he turns to automatically follow. They say nothing to each other - they never really do, after a mission - and Kaneki pretends not to notice the blood that stretches sticky and fresh between his fingers before snapping, diluted, under the pressure of the rain.

(He counts the steps that he takes away from the massacre,  _one, two, three,_ the sharp pop of his habitual finger cracking that reminds him of other numbers,  _what's a thousand minus seven?_ )

\-------✁━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He prefers the rich aroma of coffee-beans in the cafe that's only running for a front for what the Anteiku really do, but it's nice to sometimes sit in a spot by the large, glittering windows - like cut diamonds - and pretend that he's only waiting for a friend who's late for their weekend coffee and book sessions (but he's left that life a long, long time ago, when a heavy gun was pressed into his hands and his trembling fingers squeezed the trigger and blond hair soaked in red-).

He remembers everything being distinctly different because it's automatic, the way his hand immediately finds the leather grip of his gun when the bell over the door chimes past closing time, but he allows himself to relax because it's from the back door leading upstairs and it's just-

"Uta-san." He greets, finger off the trigger.

"Kaneki-kun." Is the returned greeting.

Kaneki counts the seconds it takes for Uta to walk over ( _one, two three_ ), close enough for him to see the details of the ink that winds around the taller male's neck - Νεχ ποσσυμ τεχυμ ωιωερε, νεχ σινε τε - and sometimes Kaneki likes to fool himself into thinking the words are for him - _so I can't live either without you or with you -_ and the light glints off Uta's opaque black nails as he reaches out to slide his fingers into Kaneki's hair, dips forward from his slouch. 

Their kisses always taste like iron - gunpowder and blood and the muzzle of a gun that's still sizzling from the friction of heat and bullets - and Kaneki isn't sure which one of them is the source.

"I'm back."

He's always the one who breaks the silence first, Uta silent and watchful through narrowed, expressionless eyes as if reading his every thought, weeding out the ones he deems insignificant.

"Welcome back." Is murmured a breath away from his lips, and he licks them as if he could expect to catch the words with his tongue and he wonders how they would taste - sweet, like blood, or bitter, like death, or perhaps they'd taste like nothing at all. Uta doesn't mention anything else and that's a good sign; Kaneki gets to keep his dreams tonight.

(The sound of the rain washes away everything else, pattering against the windowpane, and there are no other words exchanged in the ~~suffocating~~ silence and Kaneki counts the irregular beating of his heart,  _one, two, three_ )

\--------------✁━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

That night he sees blond hair stained red, but Hide's eyes stare up at him accusingly instead of blankly, like it's his fault, and it probably is, it definitely is. 

_one, two, three_

The words of a novel, the words of a poem, what were they again?

( _his eyebrows sparkling, his white beard hangs down his chest_ )

_one, two, three_

The blood the drips from Hide's eyes, bubbles past his lips, out of his ears and nose, slither against the tide of running water, scuttling like the insects they used to catch on summer days, hundreds of tiny legs like centipedes as they crawl up his legs, screaming as they crawl into his ears.

\-----------------------✁━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He can try all he wants, to fix the world, to patch the rips left by his indecision and inability to move on, to piece together the torn fabrics of his reality with needle and string, but at the end of the day, there's always someone with a sharp pair of scissors to tear back through all his hard work because it's only in their nature to do so - it goes unspoken that the person behind those scissors is himself, cutting, and cutting, and cutting away because no matter how much he wants to pull himself together, he also wants to fall apart.

Kaneki stares blankly at the blood as it drips between the split skin of his cheekbone onto his palm ( _one, two,_   _three_ ) and he drips between the spaces of time( _what's a thousand minus seven? Nine hundred ninety three, nine hundred eighty six, nine hundred seventy nine-_ ) back, back -  _to blond hair stained red and a still unmoving body and a name caught between his teeth in a hiss, a scream, a wail -_ Uta's chilly hand glides across the too-long locks of his hair with a thoughtful hum, moving away with a blood-soaked swab, and Kaneki looks down at his dry hands as if they had always been dry. "You should get a haircut." Uta comments, but his fingers curl into Kaneki's hair anyways, tugging a little too hard, fingers gripping the roots a little too forcefully, too tightly, to angle his head up.

The kiss stings his cut lip, but he doesn't really mind this kind of pain, the pain that numbs his mind and leaves him breathless, but he's not always quite sure that's a good thing.

And perhaps Uta is doing the cutting too, metaphorical scissors going snip, snip, snip and the thread keeping him together, already pulled too tight with the weight of the sins he holds inside him, snaps easily, spilling out like a torrent of guts when he leaves a hole into someone's stomach, until there's nothing left but an empty void that Uta fits perfectly into, like he was the one who forged it himself, forcing out the old poisonous thoughts that cut into him like rusty knives and forcing in a new kind of poison that works even slower.

The black of the void between the fragments suffocates him like ink overflowing from the pages of a book,  _his_  book, too full of letters and frantic, chicken-scratch words that blur the longer he stares and tries to make them out -  _nine hundred twenty three, nine hundred sixteen, nine hundred nine_  - it's high time that his story's ended.

(He lets Uta cut his hair, literal scissors going snip, snip, snip,  _one, two, three,_  and Kaneki feels like he's losing a little bit more of himself each time the scissors shear through another section of his hair; he pops his fingers and lets Uta rake his too sharp nails across newly exposed skin)

\-------------------------------------✁━━━━━━━━━━━

There is not a night that goes by that Hide doesn't haunt his nightmares and he wonders how much of himself must he lose to forget?

(except he doesn't want to forget, even when it's eating away at him from the inside like a hunger he can't ever satisfy, a constant gnawing that isn't physical, was never physical)

( _the thatched mats, spread outside of his chise, spread softly_ )

\-------------------------------------------------✁━━━━

The morning leaves him with bruises that weren't there when he got into bed.

Uta's side of the mattress is cold, and the sun is barely filtering through the broken shades of his room.

(wonders how everything ended up this way, how everything went wrong, when all he wanted was someone who could help piece him back together and Uta had been the one to reach out his hand after  _that incident_ , but the patches of himself he tried to put back together no longer fit, soaked too long in the most dangerous kind of charm and now it was too late to climb back out)

The sheets are stained and soaked but he's too sore to move, too tired to care.

(counts instead the movement of the second hand on the clock on the far wall, too loud in the deafening silence of his solitude,  _one, two, three_ )

\--------------------------------------------------------✁

He's become a liability, too many slip ups, too many mistakes, to big of a conscious that is leaking an easy trail to follow. This is a world where you have to disappear if you want to stay alive and somewhere along the way, he's forgotten that too.

( _s_ _ometimes before it gets better, the darkness gets bigger_ )

There's a familiar face at the other end of the gun, the wrong end - the right end? the thumb pulls back the hammer and Kaneki counts the clicks, _one, two, three_  - but it's not familiar anymore, it's different even when he smiles that same smile, because it's not the same, not when he can read that reality beneath the curve of familiar lips.

( _the person that you'd take a bullet for is behind the trigger_ )

" _Nowadays, tragedies aren't popular you know._ "

" _If you were to write a story with me in the lead role, it would certainly be a tragedy._ "

\---------------------------------------------------------

( _I’m broken, broken in the midst of this world. But you’re smiling, blind to it all._ )

The final snip, snip, _snip,_ the line is cut too soon, before he can properly tie it off, and darkness curls in around him, spilling out _from_ him, like spools of unraveling black thread.

_one, two, thr-_

**Author's Note:**

> So I was originally going to write a fic based on one of [bentobride's](http://houseangelos.co.vu/tagged/bentobride!poetry) (aka Nhixxie aka n.t.) lovely, lovely poems, but then I saw one of [antagonist's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/antagonists/pseuds/antagonists) fics, ['maker'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2170689), based on ['The Maker' animation](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDXOioU_OKM) and I remembered the really gorgeous [Trois Petits Points](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlmVaTUPTwU) by some wonderful people from Gobelins, so this fic is vaguely inspired by that idea.
> 
> I never realized I could write vaguely dark stuff too ( o uo)//
> 
> Character representations are left to your interpretations (◡‿◡✿)  
> //also still adamantly refusing to talk about 143 don't touch me I am fragile


End file.
